Manage by Designing: Approaches for Everyday Innovation

Acquire a powerful skill set for flexible thinking and creativity, based on groundbreaking research and practice

Every day, managers have opportunities to improve their organizations by creating and remaking processes, structures, products, and services. To excel at this, they need to expand on their roles as analysts and decision-makers to become competent as designers.

This program introduces managers to the principles of “design,” a powerful skill set for flexible thinking and innovation, based on groundbreaking research by Dr. Fred Collopy and his colleagues in the Weatherhead School of Management’s Department of Information Systems. Although managers’ skills as designers often determine the success or failure of their organizations, we give relatively little attention to developing design skills. When managers do study designing, they learn to reframe problems, to sketch and prototype their ideas, and to apply the logic of possibilities to see through default situations. Managers are already deeply engaged in designing as part of their everyday work. This program builds on their success, helping managers contribute to their organizations at a new level through design thinking, design skills, and design experiences.

The Weatherhead School of Management is different from other business schools. We are bold in our ideas, creative in our approach, and adaptive in our interactions within a changing business environment. We've enhanced traditional management education by integrating the fundamentals of business with ideas and practices that change individuals, organizations and societies. At Weatherhead, we develop leaders as good global citizens who innovate to create sustainable value.
Founded in 1939